Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC) in vehicles could be improved if the number, attributes and location of vehicle occupants were known. This can be used to provide a climate control system tailored to each occupant, for example, or the system can be turned off for certain seat locations if there are no occupants present at those locations.
U.S. Pat. No. 05,878,809 to Heinle, describes an air-conditioning system for a vehicle interior comprising a processor, seat occupation sensor devices, and solar intensity sensor devices. Based on seat occupation and solar intensity data, the processor provides the air-conditioning control of individual air-conditioning outlets and window-darkening devices which are placed near each seat in the vehicle. The additional means suggested include a residual air-conditioning function device for maintaining air conditioning operation after vehicle ignition switch-off, which allows maintaining specific climate conditions after vehicle ignition switch-off for a certain period of time provided at least one seat is occupied. The advantage of this design is the allowance for occupation of certain seats in the vehicle. The drawbacks include the lack of some important sensors of vehicle interior and environment condition (such as temperature or air humidity). It is not possible to set climate conditions individually at locations of each passenger seat.
U.S. Pat. No. 06,454,178 to Fusco, et al. describes an adaptive controller for an automotive HVAC system which controls air temperature and flow at each of locations that conform to passenger seats based on individual settings manually set by passengers at their seats. If the passenger corrects manual settings for his location, this information will be remembered, allowing for climate conditions taking place at other locations and further, will be used to automatically tune the air temperature and flow at the locations allowing for climate conditions at other locations. The device does not use any sensors of the interior vehicle conditions or the exterior environment, nor any seat occupation sensing.
Additional background of the invention is found in the parent application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/733,957, incorporated by reference herein.
The definitions in the Background of the Invention section of the '957 application are also incorporated by reference herein.